It
is not entirely clear why Samsung decided to be so generous suddenly.
The article does state that it could lead to more loyalty from
Samsung's employees and that other businesses from around the world
calculated that they save quite a bit of money by doing this.
However, considering how Korea is also
referred to as the Republic of Samsung, employee loyalty might
not be something that Samsung needs to be overly worried about.

Regardless
of the reasons, Samsung seems to have made this seemingly generous
decision without being compelled to do so.

What
is interesting, however, is the bit in the article that says:

As
of last year, Samsung Electronics had 319,208 full-time employees
globally, with South Korea taking up 31.1 percent. Entry-level female
employees accounted for 48.3 percent, followed by senior working moms
at 12.4 percent, the report said.

"The
return rate after maternity leave was 91 percent last year after 92
percent in 2013," another company official said. "Therefore,
we are not worried about a vacuum in our workforce as a result of
this new policy and those who take a longer leave shouldn't be
deterred by job insecurity."

Statistics
can be odd sometimes. Samsung's spokespeople can probably say,
without being disingenuous at all, that the company's return rate
after leave is 91 percent, but it does not change the fact that
entry-level female employees make up 48.3 percent of its workforce
but that working mothers make up only 12.4 percent.

That
is quite a significant difference. Is it possible that many of the
entry-level female employees, who are mostly young and
unmarried, tend to quit their jobs (or get fired) after they marry
and/or get pregnant, rather than go on maternity leave; thereby
guaranteeing that the company's return rate after maternity leave
remains so high? Or is it possible that Samsung just does not employ
pregnant women that much from the get-go?

So,
will Samsung's sudden generosity be beneficial for women? Personally,
I don't think it will be helpful for women at all. And that is
because I think these added benefits will simply compel a significant
number of Samsung's Human Resources managers to accept fewer female
job applicants from the get-go.

Case
in point, according to this
article from The New York Times,
when the Spanish government passed a law guaranteeing greater
maternity benefits, it was revealed that:

Over
the next decade, companies were 6 percent less likely to hire women
of childbearing age compared with men, 37 percent less likely to
promote them and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them, according to
a study led
by Daniel Fernández-Kranz, an economist at IE Business School in
Madrid. The probability of women of childbearing age not being
employed climbed 20 percent. Another result: Women were more likely
to be in less stable, short-term
contract jobs, which are not required to provide such benefits.

Of
course, in Samsung's case, upper management chose to increase the
company's maternity benefits as opposed to getting their arms twisted
by the Korean government. So, this might be comparing apples and
oranges. However, it should be noted that Samsung is a very big
multinational corporation; and like any large organization chock full
of people, there is bound to be competing interests. And it should
come as no surprise that some of those interests might not always be
on the same page as that of corporate headquarters.

The problems that women face are much
more deep-seated in Korea's corporate culture, as well as Korea's
familial culture. Therefore, without first making a serious effort to
challenge accepted norms and mores, I think that increasing maternity
benefits will only exacerbate matters further, rather than alleviate
them.

So
why do people overreact to relatively less dangerous things such as
MERS and react so coolly to much more dangerous things like cancer?
After all, the
smoking rate in Korea is 42 percent – and even after the new
tax takes effect and helps suppress demand, 34 percent of Koreans
will remain smokers.

For
all intents and purposes, people react disproportionately to
different things due to different reasons.

Firstly,
there is a difference in timing. Of the fourteen people who have died
after having contracted MERS, the time that it took for them to die
was a matter of days. Cancer, on the other hand, is often perceived
as something that will occur some day far in the future. Despite what
people say, we are all afraid of death. However, the further away
death is perceived to be, the more abstract it becomes and the less
we fear it.

Secondly,
it's a matter of how much control we have. When we think of cancer,
many of us tend to think that we have some control over it. We
can quit smoking, eat less junk food, drink less coffee, apply more
sunscreen,
go for annual checkups, etc. Of course, we might not necessarily
choose to exercise our convictions. How many times have we made the
same New Year's resolution to drink less and exercise more and quit
smoking? The point is that we feel that we can exert some control
over cancer if we choose to do so.

Many years ago, I saw a
family friend die of cancer. She wasted away in the hospital. She
lost weight, her hair, her youthful vigor, the sparkle that used to
twinkle in her eyes. And the screams...

But
toward the end, there was a calmness to it. Her system had been
filled with morphine and she was finally asleep, peacefully. Her
family had gathered all around her to bid her farewell. There were
tears, hugs, and prayers. And then she was gone. The death of a loved
one is tragic, but when people are given time to prepare for death,
sometimes death becomes a little easier to accept.

On
the other hand, however, what is the imagery associated with MERS?
Violent fits of coughing, increased body temperatures, isolation and
quarantine from all those that you love. Doctors and nurses wearing
hazmat suits? Death suddenly seems abrupt and lonely.

What is the
imagery associated with terrorism? Google “ISIS” and you will see. Or
don't Google “ISIS” and spare yourself the unpleasantness.

So,
for various reasons, we fear the wrong things much more than we need
to and we fear those things that we do need to fear less than we
ought to.

The
kicker, however, is that this messed up set of priorities is
perfectly rational; so long as we define “rational” as “that
which is based
on or in accordance with reason or logic.” So, it's the reasoning
that is faulty.I
am reminded of a phrase that I once learned in a computer science
class I took in school a long time ago – Garbage In, Garbage Out
(GIGO).

For good or for ill, humans have never achieved the status of homo economicus and probably never will.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Today,
a correspondent who goes by the moniker
“TheBoss” shared with me a link to a documentary called “The
True Cost.” For those who are interested, you can watch it for
free here.

This
documentary explores the “hidden costs” of fast
fashion. The filmmaker, Andrew
Morgan, highlights
the terrible work conditions and pay in garment factories located in
third-world countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia. The film goes
to list the hardships that these workers face – urban squalor,
polluted environments, deteriorating health conditions, broken
families, etc., and, of course, also focuses on the avarice and
ignorance of shoppers in the developed world, all the while
accompanied by a moody score.

I
have already written an article where I defended the existence of
sweatshops. You can read it here.

However,
I felt that I had to add a bit more for this particular documentary.
Although this documentary lasted for about ninety minutes, one
question that is never asked throughout the whole film is “as
compared to what?”

This
is a very important question. Essentially, this documentary is about
economics and it calls for economic reform. However, it is calling
for sweeping economic reforms but, at the same time, refuses to talk
about economics by ignoring this question.

When
we compare the work conditions and the pay that workers in Bangladesh
receive to those of workers in the developed world, they are,
indeed, awful. There is no doubt about that. However, that comparison
is misleading.

The
real comparison that has to made is those Bangladeshi workers'
current pay and work conditions with these workers' realistic
alternatives in Bangladesh.

What
this documentary gets absolutely right is that their working
conditions are dangerous as evidenced by the collapse
of a factory building in Bangladesh, which resulted in the deaths
of more than a thousand workers. So the question is why do so many of
these workers still choose to endure such harsh conditions and low
pay? After all, no one is forcing them at gunpoint to work in these
factories.

The
fact that they still choose to work in these dangerous sweatshops is
powerful evidence that these workers' alternatives are even worse.

Throughout
the film, various activists, and Mr. Morgan himself, call for changes
to be made in the fashion industry. It demands that workers be
guaranteed a living wage. It demands that consumers in the developed
world change their shopping habits and attitudes about materialism in
order to alleviate the strains that those workers suffer.

Let
us be generous and assume that they succeed in their efforts. Let us
say that those workers are paid a living wage (whatever the hell that
means) and affluent shoppers' demand for clothing
produced in the third world drops significantly. Then what would
become of those workers?

The
intent of this documentary appears to be shame its viewers into
believing that we are pointlessly destroying the environment and
prolonging the suffering of the poor with our materialism,
over-consumption, and avarice.

As
Milton Friedman used to say, these people are soft of heart, but,
unfortunately, they are also soft in their heads. This documentary
was all emotion and no perspective.

Never
mind that most of the documentary was filmed in countries such as
Bangladesh and Cambodia – countries with poor records of protecting
property rights and encouraging market activities that promote
industry, trade, and economic growth – things that Mr. Morgan seems
to think are harmful.

This
is how economies develop. Before the Miracle
on the Han River, Koreans, too, lived in conditions that were not
too different from those conditions that we now see in places like
Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Many
people in the developed world take our affluent societies for
granted. Our ancestors had to suffer for our affluence to exist. The
only difference is that we can see Bangladeshis and Cambodians suffer now but we cannot
see the suffering that occurred in our own past.Mr.
Morgan and those other activists in his film may have good intentions. However, it does not change the fact that they all suffer from a debilitating case of economic ignorance; and it is this ignorance that is the true enemy of the
poor.

However, the point is that all of this may be moot in the not-too distant future because of improvements in technology. According to this article in The Economist, robots that can stitch and sew keep getting better and cheaper. Mr. Morgan might get his wish some day after all. The question is whether he will be happy with the results.

Also, about a hundred airmen from Osan Air Base have been placed under quarantine at a military hospital when an NCO tested positive for MERS. This is the one to watch out for. Considering how people are packed together in the military, a virus like MERS could be even deadlier than the North Koreans could be.

Personally, despite all that, I think that the fear of this virus has spread faster than the virus itself and that it is important that people should have some perspective. After all, this is not the first time an unusually strong strain of the flu virus spread in Korea. Also, statistically speaking, people ought to be much more worried about cancer and hypertension than about influenza or SARS or MERS or Ebola.

That being said, however, the public's concern is not entirely hard to understand. After all, wanting to be safe is certainly an understandable response.

Therefore, considering the fact that most of the people who have been quarantined are those who had been unlucky enough to have been in close proximity to the initial patients, especially those who had been in the same hospitals, the government could have publicized the names of those hospitals where the patients were quarantined so that the rest of the public could take precautions and avoid those places.

However, the government chose to keep those names a secret. The government reasoned that publicizing those names would create panic. The government's reasoning is not without merit. If the rest of the public chooses to avoid those hospitals like the plague (pun intended), those hospitals could lose badly needed revenues.

The fact remains, however, that there is something grossly perverse about the government refusing to share information with the public that could be in the public's best interest.

I think that this is as good a time as any for the government and the country's hospitals to discuss a new insurance policy that hospitals can choose to purchase should epidemics like this occur again in the future. However, that is a discussion for another day. For now, this fire has to be put out first.

Whether the government's action is justifiable or not, however, for every cause there is an effect. In response to the government's refusal to release the names of those hospitals, members of the public have taken matters into their own hands.

When people are afraid, they will seek safety wherever they can find it. And for understandable reasons, the public does not feel safe when the government is keeping tight lipped about this. Therefore, it is only natural that some members of the public have begun to panic. Again, it is not entirely rational, but when was the last time the masses were ever rational in the face of a contagious and potentially deadly disease?

The government could have taken control and ended this panic. If it had decided to publish the names of those hospitals, it would have been able to provide authoritative information that could have put all those false rumors and silly homeopathic medical advice to rest.

On top of that, if it is ever revealed that any of those people under quarantine or patients suffering from MERS contracted the disease because of the government's failure to publicize this information, the government is going to find itself being sued by a lot of angry people.

The government could still act now and allay the people's fear. Instead, the government chose to arrest two people for spreading false rumors about MERS.

Until this virus runs its course, members of the public are going to do whatever they can to feel safe. Unless the government chooses to change tact, any panic that might (or might not) result will be the government's fault.

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About Me

My name is John Lee and I am currently the editor and writer behind the independently-run blog, “The Korean Foreigner.”

Recently, I have also begun to work as a freelance copy editor for Freedom Factory. Here, with permission from Freedom Factory, I shall post English translations of Freedom Factory’s weekly newsletter “Freedom Voice.”